Birthdays
by Arlath's Star
Summary: What were the chances that anyone at Torchwood would ever get a normal birthday? About as slim as London getting a normal Christmas.
1. Tosh

**I know I haven't been on here for months, but for my birthday someone very kindly sent me a muse. I don't know who it was yet, but I'd like to thank them. Whether or not you should thank them remains yet to be seen. Also, whilst Miracle Day's been going on I've been beginning to miss the old team again, so I decided I ought to bring them out again and dust them off. **

**I looked around to try and find out the Team's dates of birth, but only came up with Ianto's. So instead I just put the birthdays in the order that best suited the stories. Feel free to correct me if you like – I'm intrigued whether there are set dates or not now. **

**Language warning due to presence of Owen.**

**Oh, and while I got a muse for my birthday I did **_**not**_**, I repeat **_**not,**_** get the rights to Torchwood, despite putting them on my list. Again. **

**Tosh**

The IM conversation continues

Owen: why can't you stop being so nosy?

Gwen: All I asked was 'how are you?' It's perfectly acceptable in most conversations

Owen: you didn't have to ask in such a condescending way

Gwen: I didn't! You just look worn out. Did you sleep last night?

Owen: that's private. Shove your nose in someone else's affairs

Tosh: You did look ill when you came in

Owen: I'm not ill

Tosh: you look it

Owen: I'm a doctor – I'm** not** ill

Gwen: you didn't take a doughnut when Ianto brought them round

Tosh: you normally take three

Owen: I'M NOT ILL!

Ianto: Not to interrupt, but how are those updates going?

Gwen: Wonderfully

Tosh: we've been concentrating really really hard…

Ianto: yes?

Owen: they're lying

Tosh: … it's just that the system is slow

Ianto: Could that be to do with the number of instant messages flying around?

Tosh: No, it's because I need to update the server. But I need some new equipment.

Ianto: Have you asked Jack?

Tosh: I will do

Gwen: I'd go tell him now – he's just come off the phone

Tosh has left the conversation

Owen: Can you see into Harkness' office from where you're sat?

Gwen: Not really.

Owen: Can I swap places with you?

Gwen: Why?

Ianto: I don't want to know

Gwen: I can't see him anyway. But when he's yelling at UNIT it's hard not to hear

Owen: especially when you've got your ear pressed to the door. Like last week. Yes, Gwen?

Gwen: anyway, that's not the point

Ianto: What is?

Gwen: It's Tosh's birthday next week

Owen: Tosh has a birthday?

Gwen: I thought we should give her a surprise party

Owen: you would

Gwen: Shut up, Owen. We need to sort out a present and someone needs to tell Jack

Ianto: I'll do that. And I can get a cake

Owen: There's going to be cake?

* * *

><p><em>A week later, 10th June<em>

_8.13 am_

It was only over breakfast that I remembered. I'd been puzzling about it all morning. I knew there was something I'd forgotten that I'd thought of last night, and at first I thought it was to do with the Bengvitian console that we'd picked up. But when I glanced at the calendar I found that I'd written 'my birthday' in today's square.

Not that it really matters. It might as well just say 'Thursday' or 'Mother's day – USA' for all the impact it makes. I mean, it's just another year older. It doesn't matter that much in the scale of things. And since I'm the only one who remembers anyway it's not really an opportunity for any kind of social gathering. Maybe I'll put a film on tonight, or something.

Of course, they might do something at work. They wrote me a card last year, and Ianto found me a bunch of flowers, but Gwen's here now. I remember what she was like at Christmas. And she was worrying about when Jack's birthday is not too long ago. I can just imagine her marshalling them all… A cake would be nice.

I bet they'd make it a surprise party though. This is Torchwood, after all.

Maybe this might not be such a bad birthday after all.

_10.56 am_

Seems I was right about the surprise party. Nobody's mentioned anything yet. No 'happy birthdays' or anything. No mysterious smiles. But Ianto's gone out shopping, and Jack's down in the cells… Maybe that's where they're preparing it. I can just imagine Janet in party hat… I'd better not go down, just in case.

Am I being overly hopeful here?

_3.32 pm_

I cracked the Bengvitian console, which is a good enough present for me!

I'm starting to have doubts, actually. Maybe they have forgotten. Or maybe they're just really good actors. If I were Jack I'd make me think that they'd forgotten all day, then spring something on me right at the end.

Oh come on Tosh, stop being so pathetic. Didn't you say this morning that birthdays don't really matter anyway?

A restaurant would be nice…

_5.48 pm_

Still nothing.

I wish Owen would smile at me or something. Say happy birthday. I know a card or a present is too much to ask for, but a smile…?

_6.20pm_

Gwen and Owen have left. I think I'll stop hanging around and go too. See if anyone tries to stop me.

_7.02 pm_

Looks like I'm rolling out the DVDs. Happy birthday, Toshiko Sato.

* * *

><p>Tosh still felt fairly miserable when she entered the next day. She hadn't been expecting much, after all, but she hadn't expected her friends to <em>forget<em>, not really…

"You alright?" Gwen asked, some concern in her voice.

"Um, yeah, fine."

Gwen eyed her as she walked away and raised her eyebrows at Ianto. He shrugged in reply.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Tosh, I've got a signal coming in from the town centre. Quite a weak one, but it's all we've got today. Will you take Owen and go and check it out for me?"<p>

Tosh nodded glumly at Jack's request. Then she realised what she'd done and tried to brighten up. "Yes, of course."

Jack gave her an odd look. "There's nothing wrong, is there…?"

"No. I'm fine."

"Just being a good leader and checking my Team's all well and happy."

"Have you been reading that handbook again, sir?" Ianto called over. It got a smile off Tosh. A very small one.

He came back over a few minutes later, once she'd left. "Area's clear. Gwen's ready. Let's go."

* * *

><p>Tosh was genuinely shocked when she walked back into the Hub, followed cautiously at a distance by Owen (birthday decorations were clearly contagious). "But… I thought…. Oh…"<p>

"I believe 'Happy Birthday' is the correct thing to say in this situation." Jack said rather formally, smiling as he waved his hand at the banners. He stepped forwards and gave her a much more informal hug. "So 'Happy Birthday!'"

As a chorus of 'Happy Birthday"s rang around the room, with even Owen managing to sound as though it was actually an occasion to be celebrated, Tosh just stood there looking bewildered.

"We couldn't really think of anything to get you." Gwen apologised. "Well, apart from chocolates and things like that. But then Ianto remembered what you said about the server–" Ianto gave her a polite nod "- And Jack agreed and he managed to find you this." She gestured at what Tosh had thought was a small mountain of wrapping paper. "I don't know where he got it from, and I don't really want to ask… Well, I hope it works."

They all watched as Tosh knelt beside it and began to battle with the wrapping.

"Ianto, did you wrap it?" Gwen asked curiously, as a strip of sellotape tried to bind Tosh's arms to her sides.

"Nope. I left Jack to it."

"Owen helped." Jack said defensively.

"I tried." Owen whined. "But we ran out of wrapping paper, and…"

"And duct tape seemed like the best option?" Gwen sounded amused. Tosh tried to remove the offending item from her hand but it just clung tighter.

"It's not duct tape, it's that stuff Ianto keeps in the storage cupboard."

Ianto put his head in his hands. "You mean the stuff that says 'Made in Chinaa' on it?"

"Yes."

"As in Chinaa the planet not Chinaa the misprint?"

"Err… yes."

"The 'stuff' that just happened to fall through the Rift last Wednesday?"

"Err…"

"Is it supposed to be corrosive?" Tosh's tone of scientific interest held a strong degree of worry.

"Err… Shit."

* * *

><p>Half an hour later Tosh, hands now bandaged, watched Jack and Ianto remove the wrapping paper using shears and protective leather gloves. And face masks.<p>

"It's very nice." She managed, as the first glimpse came into view.

Gwen jumped back as an uncontained stray length of tape made a dart at her leg.

"Where did you get it from?" Tosh continued. And then, as the bulk of paper was removed and she saw it properly: "Oh. Oh. That is… Oh…"

"Told you she'd like it." Jack stated, characteristically smug. "That right, Tosh?"

"Don't think she'll be responding for a while." Ianto commented following the pause.

"Too busy communing with her new computer." Owen added.

Jack cleared his throat. "There is just one bit of small print…"

Tosh paid attention long enough to tear her gaze away. "What's that?"

"You have to install it. None of us could work out how."

* * *

><p>"So how was that then? Good birthday?"<p>

"Yeah." Tosh looked round at the remains of the cake. "Amazing. I haven't had one like that… not ever, I think. It's just…"

"What?" Gwen asked.

"Well, my birthday was yesterday."

Everyone else exchanged confused looks.

"I mean, it's not that it really matters or anything…" Tosh tried to cover up. "I don't mind at all. This was lovely…"

"Oh god." Gwen breathed. "No wonder you looked so heartbroken all day. I wondered…"

Ianto started to laugh silently. Owen snorted. "Well done Gwen. Who is it we employ to research people's backgrounds?"

"It's fine, really…" Tosh tried again. Gwen looked at her face, and a giggle broke through. Jack was trying hard, but failing, and managed to set Gwen off once more.

"Oh Tosh…!"

"What?"

Ianto managed to remain calm just long enough to explain. "Torchwood has copies of your birth certificate. We checked the date."

"So?" Tosh was still confused.

"Your birthday's today, Tosh. That's what it says in the records. The 11th, not the 10th. Definitely today. Not yesterday. Today."

"Oh." Tosh looked at the floor, her face turning as red as her hands.

"I think we'd better get Gwen to send you a reminder too next year."

**The next on is longer, better (in my humble opinion, at least) and features the birthday of the lovely Ianto Jones. You also have to wait more than a week for it, if you're interested, because right now I'm off to Hadrian's wall. See ya! **


	2. Ianto

**And I'm back from the wilds. Thank you so much to my reviewers: LAHH, brionyjae and Eleanor Harkness-Jones! And a special thankyou to Eleanor, who found the real birthday dates for me, thus proving that I have already got the order of the chapters/birthdays wrong. Never mind. Artistic license and all that. **

**This chapter just kept going and going and going and some strange plot took over towards the end. I'm still not sure whether it works. And there's another language warning, I'm afraid. That's what the 'T' was for. **

To: J. Harkness; T. Sato, O. Harper

From: G. Cooper

Subject: Do NOT let Ianto read this!

Hi!

It's Ianto's birthday next week. I thought we should probably do something for it. Has anybody got any ideas? I can bake a cake again, but I thought it might be nice if we could all go out for a meal somewhere. I don't know about presents at all, and the coffee machine seems to be working fine at the moment. I was hoping Jack could help out there.

So – what do you think?

* * *

><p><span>To:<span> G. Cooper; J. Harkness; T. Sato

From: O. Harper

Subject: Reply: Do NOT let Ianto read this!

Dear Gwen,

Some problems with your plan:

1. Every time you suggest that we go out for a meal together and we do, something chooses that particular moment to come through the rift. Or the weevils decide to have a party on the same night. I don't know how, but I suspect the aliens are trying to gatecrash our social calendar. Maybe they're jealous. But then that would imply that they're even worse at interpersonal relations than we are.

2. I don't want to eat out with you lot anyway. I'd rather take the weevils.

3. Surprise parties don't work at Torchwood, though I suspect Ianto might be intelligent enough to know when his own birthday is

4. By the time I've replied he'll already know about the 'surprise party' anyway. He'll probably bring balloons.

5. There is no way I am ever, EVER eating your cake again. Why the hell did you pour pink alien gloop over the top?

6. It's your plan

* * *

><p><span>To:<span> J. Harkness; T. Sato, O. Harper

From: G. Cooper

Subject: Reply: Do NOT let Ianto read this!

Thank you for those points, Owen.

1. We're battling against the rift any time we do anything, and dining out is better than a takeaway.

2. You don't have to come.

3. I never said it was going to be a surprise party

4. I know I may as well have included Ianto in the address list, but we could at least pretend that he doesn't know anything about our plans. (Ianto – if you can find them, balloons would be good. I'm useless at blowing them up. And we can use them for target practice later)

5. The cake was a joint effort from Jack and me. To be fair, the cake bit was nice. It's just that we couldn't find any icing sugar so we improvised with some marshmallows we found in the back of the kitchen. Myfanwy liked it. And it's not our fault it stuck your teeth together. (Ianto – could you stock icing sugar in future? You never know when it might come in useful)

6. Have you got a better one?

* * *

><p><span>To:<span> G. Cooper; T. Sato, O. Harper

From: J. Harkness

Subject: Reply: Do NOT let Ianto read this!

I have a plan. I'll meet you all after Ianto leaves.

Ianto, go home early will you?

* * *

><p>"Has he gone?"<p>

"Yeah, he cleared off about half an hour back." Owen looked quite pleased about this. "Must have been spying on our emails."

"So what's the plan?"

"Is that a doubting tone I hear, Miss Cooper?"

"Would I ever doubt you, Jack?"

"Even when his last plan involved an entire tank of freshwater shrimps and…"

Tosh waved Owen to be quiet. "What _is _the plan?"

"Well, there's no point in doing anything surprising, because Ianto will already know about it. That's why I've already asked him what restaurant he'd like to go to." Jack grinned a typical Jack grin.

"Where?"

"It's a surprise."

"Brilliant."

"I'm also going to give him the day off, but I don't think he knows that yet."

Owen looked suddenly troubled. "But who'll make the coffee?"

The grin widened. "We will. And we'll do everything else he normally does."

Tosh was perplexed, sure that something fundamental was missing. "So he's just going to walk in and we've got to stop him from doing anything? What's he going to do all day?"

Jack shrugged. "Whatever he wants."

Suspicion crept over Owen's features. "Is getting us to do all his work just some way of getting him to yourself all-"

"No." Jack denied vehemently. "I'll be sharing the workload too."

Gwen's arms were folded and even Tosh was eyeing him with a hint of mistrust.

"I promise."

* * *

><p>Ianto worried.<p>

* * *

><p>"Happy birthday, Ianto!" Gwen's morning smile was brighter than the Cardiff day outside, which wasn't hard, considering. "I see you've managed to pre-empt me, despite the fact that I tried to get here half an hour before you."<p>

Ianto gave her a small bow.

"Do you have some kind of computer link to my alarm clock?"

"If I did, I would reset it at inappropriate moments."

"No you wouldn't."

"True."

"The balloons are nice." Gwen stood back to admire them. "Just what I was thinking of."

Ianto was quite proud of his 'death fleet' himself. They grouped threateningly over the computer desks and above the walkways like a watchful flotilla of very colourful zeppelins. "Jack's already walking round with scissors. He thinks we can train Myfanwy to fetch them back when they go floating off to get stuck under the roof."

"Could we?"

"Not unless we covered them with chocolate sauce. I doubt they'd be returned whole though."

"And has Jack tried to gas himself on helium yet?"

"We went through that about twenty minutes ago."

"Thank god. I missed it."

Ianto smiled a smile of perfect reminiscence. "I've got it recorded."

"Good?"

"Beautiful."

Gwen was sorely tempted. "Maybe later then."

A tall figure in a particularly distinctive coat waved at them from the other side of the Hub. Gwen waved back. "It hasn't quite worn off yet then?"

Ianto shook his head with a smile.

* * *

><p>Owen turned up at the normal time. Birthdays weren't worth an hour of lost sleep so far as he was concerned. "What have you done to Jack?"<p>

Gwen stiffened. "We haven't done anything to Jack."

"Really? 'Cos it sounds like someone kicked him in-"

"Jack tried to inflate himself with the helium pump." Ianto explained calmly. "It was purely voluntary."

"Really? What are all these stupid balloons around for then?"

Ianto tried hard to come up with a purpose of a balloon that Owen would accept. "Jack wants to use them for target practice later."

"Great. Can we draw faces on them?"

Oh well, anything that kept Owen occupied. "If you must."

"Owen, you're supposed to be-" Gwen trailed off. "Ianto, did Jack tell you what was happening today before he started inhaling happy gas?"

"You mean the enforced work leave?"

"Yes."

"No, he didn't."

Gwen sighed in resignation. "Do you know _everything _that happens in this place?"

"It's my job. Only today it's your job."

Gwen brightened visibly. "Better start spilling the beans then."

* * *

><p>The coffee machine must have been the only piece of equipment in the Hub that Tosh didn't know how to deal with, excluding the shelf of 'one's we haven't worked out yet but don't seem too dangerous' down in the archives. But her reputation meant that she'd been saddled with it anyway.<p>

Ianto had taped instructions to the side, but they weren't helping much. Tosh had a feeling that the coffee machine was a bit like Myfanwy, who responded far better to Ianto than she did to anyone else. Maybe chocolate would work with the coffee machine too?

Ah well. It was only a drinks machine – it couldn't be that hard to work out.

* * *

><p>Owen thought that he had finally cracked the filing system in the Archives. For a long time he'd thought that there wasn't one, but then he'd realised that Ianto was far too fanatically organised elsewhere to ever let as good an opportunity as the Torchwood Archives go to waste. And now he had a distinct feeling that Ianto was filing in Welsh.<p>

"Gwen?"

"Mmhhm?"

"You're Welsh."

"Have you only just noticed this?"

"How would you say 'alien tea-caddy' in Welsh?"

"I wouldn't. I wouldn't even say it in English."

"But what is it?"

"Owen, I'm trying to write up a report."

"And I'm trying to file this damn artefact!"

"Do aliens even have tea?"

"Ask Jack. I don't care. Just tell me how you'd say it."

Gwen punched in a full stop and said something that to Owen's ears stood a good chance of being the actual alien term for the pot he was holding.

"Er – can you write that down?"

* * *

><p>"Will somebody <em>please <em>stop Jack from taking calls from UNIT? That gas hasn't worn off yet and I'm sick of getting emails asking us to confirm that we haven't been taken over."

* * *

><p>Ianto examined the gallery of balloon heads with interest. The artist had obviously gone for a deliberately simplistic approach, outlining only eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hair to create the basic impression of a face. Or he just couldn't draw. Still, at least Owen wasn't wasting their supplies of marker pens on things they were just going to shoot down-<p>

Ianto did a small double take as he looked closer. Yes, it just could be… And if that was a portrait of himself, then that would make that other man's face Jack, probably, (there wasn't really that much difference) and the long-haired one with glasses would be Tosh. Typical Owen that. That left Gwen as the face with freckles. Or chicken pox. Or whatever else black dots could feasibly represent. But no balloon anywhere that was obviously meant to be Owen.

He found some more balloons and made some Owen ones specially. It was only fair that they all had someone to shoot at. And it wasn't as if he was allowed to do anything else.

* * *

><p>Owen shoved the artefact onto the shelves. He was pretty damn sure that this couldn't be the right place, but it did fit.<p>

One down, four to go.

"Gwen, how would you say blue-green pl-?"

"Go get a dictionary." Gwen scrawled out a note. "I'm busy taking Jack's calls."

Owen nodded. If someone picked up the phone whilst Gwen was acting as his translator they would definitely think Torchwood Three had been overrun. "What did you do with the man himself?"

"Oh, we packed him off to the tourist office."

Tosh stopped as she passed, still trying to scrub a coffee stain out of her sleeve. Ianto's pride and joy was not being at all cooperative. "We're letting him talk to the public?"

Gwen's head dropped onto the desk. "Will someone get him back? Please?"

* * *

><p>"And then you can visit the castle. The castle's great, but don't go down to the cellars. There's some old, old tunnels round there, and occasionally the odd weevil comes along to take a look. I like to think that they enjoy sightseeing too – that's why you see them round the bay so much. Personally the water tower's my favourite, but last week we <em>did <em>find these weird kinda fishy things swimming up it – looked like they were from Tewashi 7 – Hey, Tosh, what are you doing?"

"I'm so sorry." Tosh tried to smile a Ianto-polite-receptionist sort of smile at the group of bewildered Japanese tourists stood in front of her. She shoved Jack behind the curtain. "He's on probation."

* * *

><p>Owen took over phone duty. He'd done a swap with Gwen. At first he thought that he'd got the better end of the deal – she was off cleaning the kitchen now – but everybody and anybody seemed to be calling them today. Maybe it was national bombard Torchwood with pointless phone-calls day?<p>

"No, I don't have a fucking clue what you're on about. No, our normal receptionist isn't here. It's his day off. I don't know where Jack is. Yes, that's Captain Harkness. No, I don't know where he is. I just told you that. Are you even bloody listening? Look-" Owen slammed the phone down, missing the handset. "Tosh, will you take over with this? I've still got that damn filing to do."

"Sorry, Owen. Gwen and Jack are desperate for coffee and I promised them I'd sort it. I'd ask Ianto to help, but I've no idea where he is."

Owen swore. Again. He still had two of those stupid objects to put in storage, and he was sure Ianto had deliberately left him with the most obscure things. And with that bloody filing system… He picked up the tattered dictionary he'd found and started leafing through to try and find the Welsh for 'snorkel', attempting the most unpronounceable-looking words out loud on the way.

* * *

><p>Tosh kicked the coffee machine, then looked round guiltily to see if Ianto was there. This shouldn't be so <em>hard…<em> And now everyone else was getting cranky from caffeine deficiency, and Jack had still forbidden Ianto from doing anything remotely like work…. He'd slipped out now, probably to get himself a decent cup of coffee.

* * *

><p>"What's our security code?"<p>

Gwen looked over at Owen. "Not a clue. Try asking Ianto."

"He's not here, remember?"

"Jack then. Oh, no, he's sorting some paperwork down in the Archives somewhere. What about Tosh?"

"Nah, she's all worked up because she can't get that bloody machine working." Owen wanted to kick something. "And she got stuck for half an hour trying to explain Cardiff's history to an American couple."

"Why do you want it anyway?"

"UNIT's asking. Arseholes."

"Just ignore them. Jack always does."

* * *

><p>Owen had found the perfect target for his caffeine-shortage-fuelled frustration.<p>

Tosh collapsed in a chair and watched him, tempted to join in. "Who are you pretending they are?"

Owen reloaded, and fired again. "I'm shooting all the ones that show Ianto."

"This isn't Ianto's fault. It was Jack's idea, not his."

Owen reaimed.

* * *

><p>"OW!"<p>

"Shit, I didn't mean to!"

Gwen froze in the middle of what was already a very difficult call. "I'm sorry, I think somebody's just shot Jack." _Click_.

* * *

><p>"It didn't hit you at all!" Owen felt almost cheated. "It only grazed the surface."<p>

"It still hurt."

"Just give him a plaster and be done with it." Gwen advised, torn between relief and anger. "Look, Ianto's back."

Ianto got three explanations, one from Jack, one from Owen and one from Tosh. He chose to believe Tosh's version, as the impartial observer.

Jack rubbed his hand over his shoulder. "Maybe we should call it a day. I've got the restaurant booked for 7.30 anyway."

The others all nodded. "We'll wait for you outside." Gwen told them.

Ianto watched her near-drag the others away with a smile. "Looks like someone's trying to buy us some time."

"Yeah, and you still need to kiss my arm better. Right?"

* * *

><p>Outside the tourist office a debate is going on in hushed tones, voices crescendoing as the argument progresses and countermanding orders are given. Then the door swings open, into the instant silence outside.<p>

"Raining again. Bloody Cardiff. Every ti- Bloody hell!"

"Owen! Owen!"

"Get off her, you bastard, get off!"

"Drop your weapons or we'll shoot her!"

"We haven't got any bloody weapons! Who the fuck are you?"

"UNIT. Who are you?"

"We're Torchwood. Torchwood Three, Cardiff. Got that? Now leave her alone- no!"

"If you're Torchwood why did you fail to confirm your security?"

"What?"

"Look, we're Torchwood, we don't take orders from UNIT or confirm things with them or anything else…"

"How many more of you are there?"

"Two, two, there's just two more in the Hub, stop it please…"

"Look, please wait, Jack's in there, he'll explain…"

"Captain Harkness is dead."

"What? No he isn't, he's-"

"I'm arresting you for the infiltration of Torchwood Three and the imprisonment or murder of its employees."

"WHAT?"

"No, we _are _Torchwood, we are – Will you listen to me? Will you-"

Silence again.

* * *

><p>Ianto's birthday did not go well.<p>

Following a day of torture in which he watched his Archives, coffee machine and filing system all go to ruin, his subsequent arrest upon leaving the no longer spick-and-span Hub, and two hours of explaining to one of UNIT's most aggressive sergeants that they _were_ Torchwood, thank you very much, and that a few minor communications issues did not mean that they had a full-blown red-alert security issue on their hands, the very last thing he wanted to do was drive with Jack to the nearest army base to free the rest of their team.

He did it anyway.

* * *

><p>"Really, they did the right thing." Ianto admitted, leaning back into the sofa. It wasn't even his birthday anymore. And they had definitely missed the restaurant booking. "Owen was being fairly unhelpful as a receptionist, and he did fail to provide the security code when they suspected something might be wrong. Adding to that your helium-fuelled conversations with them, some very strange reports from the tourists, Owen muttering mispronounced Welsh down the line, and Gwen telling them that someone had shot you, I think they had fair basis for coming to check us over."<p>

Jack raised his head from his hands. The others had all been parcelled off to their respective homes. "I'm afraid I can't let you take the day off next year, Ianto."

Ianto shuddered. Another day off was the last thing he wanted. "I know my duty to Cardiff, sir." He thought for a moment. "Actually, I think I'd prefer it if next year you all took the day off instead."

**Any reviews will be gratefully received. I know I'm bad at writing them myself so here's some basic questions you can answer for me. (please?)**

**- Did the random UNIT thing (which basically barged in and demanded to be written, for no apparent reason) work? **

**- Try and warp your mind to be like Jack's; now what party games would you particularly enjoy? (I cannot guarantee that ones along the line of hide-and-seek with a Harkness twist will definitely be included, but feel free to make suggestions anyway. It would certainly show that you've successfully completed the thinking exercise) **


	3. Owen

**I am really sorry this took so long. I actually meant to get it out on Friday evening, but then things got in the way. Like a requisitioned laptop, writer's block, a new Torchwood episode and a terrifying Doctor Who one. Terrifying because at the end they were talking about stuff I had **_**just written!**_** Which was slightly creepy. You'll see. **

**Thanks to the lovely lovely people who found time to review: Eleanor Harkness-Jones, ForestSprite, Chalcedony Rivers, L.A.H.H. and aussiegirl97! **

Owen 

Owen found to his horror that he was whistling. _Whistling. _Whistling some tune (he couldn't remember the name, and it was going to bug him all day) as he made his breakfast.

Hell, it was his birthday. He could whistle every once in a while for a genuinely innocent purpose if he wanted to.

He'd make them take him to the pub. It was his birthday – they'd have to buy the drinks. Or a club, perhaps. Nah, he'd have to put up with Jack dancing. The pub it was. And even then he'd have to check that it wasn't karaoke night first.

He could even stomach a cake, if they'd bought it from the shop this time. Not another one of Gwen and Jack's concoctions. And he'd get to choose what kind of takeaway they had for lunch. He could even get them to put up balloons again – the shooting session they had all had had been great last time, once they'd drawn that damned UNIT sergeant's moustachioed face on each and every target…

Owen's train of thought continued in this way until he reached the Hub, halting only briefly in the Cardiff rush-hour to moan about roadworks.

He got an absent-minded "Hello Owen" off Tosh. The same "Hello Owen" he got nearly every morning. And a smile off Gwen and a nod from Ianto and-

"Ah, Owen. I see that you've finally managed to drag your arse in here. We're expecting a Rift spike in a couple of moments."

"I had a lie-in."

"Yeah, well check with the Rift predictor next time you're planning on having one. Now come on; we've got work to do." Jack strode off.

Owen paused. He looked around. No one looked up. Screw this. "Happy Birthday, anyone?" Another look round. "_Anyone_?"

"Hmmmn?"

"Look, I don't want a surprise party or anything, ok?"

Gwen looked up at him properly. "Sorry?"

"I know I've got the date right. I checked. Today's my birthday and you bastards have bloody well forgotten!"

"We know it's your birthday."

Owen seized on this admission. "So this is deliberate? You deliberately decided to ignore my birthday when you even celebrated tea-boy's? You-"

"You did ask." Ianto cut in quietly.

"What-?" Owen began, but stopped to allow Tosh to explain clearly and calmly, as though addressing an irate toddler.

"When Gwen asked you a week ago what you wanted for your birthday you said that you didn't want a birthday. I can find the CCTV footage if you like."

Owen blinked. "But-"

"Guess you just got what you wished for." Jack turned to address Ianto instead. "I need you and Gwen with me – If Tosh's systems are right we've got ten minutes until this thing hits us."

* * *

><p>"<em>I'm sorry Jack. I think it's on the blink again. I'll try reconfiguring it when I've correlated these results<em> – _some of the numbers I originally put in might be a bit out." _

Jack glanced in the rear mirror at where Gwen and Ianto were dripping rainwater over the back seat of the SUV. "It's fine, Tosh. At least we hit the right day this time. But next time we do one of these I think we maybe oughta bring some umbrellas, especially if we're in a field again. And some books too. I-spy gets kinda boring when all you can see is wet grass and sheep. Wet sheep."

"_I'll make sure we get some lunch ready." _

"Ianto wants coffee. He hasn't said it yet, but he does."

"_Did you get anything good?"_

"Oh yeah."

"_What?"_

"Wait until we get back. Won't be long."

"_Ok, I'll just go and-"_

"Don't leave me!"

"_Err, Jack?"_

"Ianto and Gwen aren't talking to me."

"_Why not?"_

"Well, after we'd got bored of I-spy and played hangman on the back of Gwen's arm I suggested that we rate the sheep."

"_What for?"_

"Attractiveness. And then they got all offended."

"_Did you mention anything about them being Welsh?"_

"No. Why?"

"_It's one of those racist stereotypes that all the Welsh people, well, like sheep. A lot. Something to do with living in remote rural areas." _

"I thought _everyone _liked sheep. They do keep you warm. There was this one time when-"

"Jack, I do NOT want to hear about _any_ relationship you have ever had with a sheep or any other four-footed animal, alive, dead or somewhere in between. Is that understood?"

"Gwen's talking to me again."

* * *

><p>"Happy Birthday."<p>

"At last." Owen snarled, before turning his attention to the object before him. "What is it?"

"A present from the Rift."

"Thanks a lot."

Jack pretended to be hurt by Owen's ungracious demeanour. "You haven't heard what it does yet."

"What _does _it do?" Tosh asked. Ianto exchanged a look with her which told her that he was equally mystified.

"It's a lamp."

"It's doing a shit job at it."

"It only lights up when you hold it. But that's not the only thing it does." Jack looked round expectantly waiting for someone to say something along the lines of: 'What, Jack?'. But they denied him the pleasure. "It also grants wishes."

"What, like Aladdin?" Gwen burst out.

Jack tilted his hand back and forth. "Sort of. There's no rubbing a lamp and getting a genie to shoot out of it, but you do get three wishes."

"Three?" Owen asked, suddenly starting to see the potential here. Birthday wishes that would actually come true… now that was something he could work with.

Jack brought all his dreams crashing down. "The problem is that the wishes only last for around twenty-four hours. Then the stuff you wished for just vanishes. Means you have to spend the money quick. And it's kinda unhelpful if you've wished that you were the opposite gender and then it runs out at the wrong moment."

"Why the hell did you wish that?"

"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Ianto mentally filed this under 'things about Jack's past I really _really_ don't want to know' and at the same couldn't help wondering about '_the wrong moment'_...?

Thank god Gwen interrupted him. "So what are you going to wish for?"

Owen tried to think. How come you could always think of tonnes of things you wanted when you couldn't get them and then when someone actually asked…

The others seemed to recognise this. "Money." Gwen suggested. "Sounds like your sort of wish. Oh, no, it won't last. Leprechaun gold. So there's no point in wishing for a new car or anything either."

"The traditional health, wealth and happiness are also out then." Ianto quipped.

"Aw, come on." Jack looked round at them all in exasperation. "That's all you can think of? What about when you were a kid and there'd be things you'd dream of doing, all those hours of make-believe…"

"The only kids I know spend most of their time shooting aliens on a screen." Ianto pointed out. "Not really something we want to be wishing for."

Tosh shook her head. "How about 'I wish we could fly'? Or-"

Owen suddenly realised that in life there are some incredibly important things you never really pay much attention to until they're gone. Gravity, for instance.

"You just wasted my fucking wish!"

"Oh god. Oh god."

"I'm sorry, I didn't think, I…"

"Hey, near-zero gravity! I haven't done this in years!"

"Sir, watch out for that coffee!"

Gwen got over the fact that she was now floating several meters above her desk. Thank god it was fastened to the floor. "Look, we've got all the chairs and things up here too."

"Show off." Owen muttered. Jack was doing somersaults.

"No, this is how you get around."

Ianto tried swimming in the air too. It was… strange. He propelled himself, if that was the word, over towards the floating coffee cup and rescued it, although he couldn't do anything about the now also floating contents. "I guess this is why they have all that specially designed equipment in space."

"Uh huh." Jack was showing Tosh how to move easily. "Which means we're probably going to have to unwish this the first time anyone needs the toilet."

"What, you're going to waste another one of my wishes? You're going to use one up unwishing a wish I didn't ask for in the first place?"

"Jack! Help, I'm upside down!"

While Jack righted Gwen Ianto made his way gingerly through the minefield of debris now floating around the Hub, testing out his new 'flying' skills. Ah. Minefield.

"Jack, that Artruvian weaponry – what happened to it?"

"Ah."

Tosh tried to think it through. "It was on the table. I had a shield round it to stop it detonating, but…"

"… It's now floating somewhere in the upper reaches of the Hub." Ianto completed.

"Second thoughts." Jack announced. "Let's not turn the gravity back on until we've recovered and secured that artefact."

"And possibly every other object that's going to come crashing back down here when we make that wish?" Gwen suggested. "Like the laptop, the chairs, us…"

"That would also be a good idea."

"Right. Who's got string?"

* * *

><p>"Two more folders for you, Ianto."<p>

"Ok." Ianto took them off Tosh and shoved them in the nearest drawer which still had a bit of space, holding the rest of the contents down as he did so. Filing could wait for now. He'd sort it all out later. These were dire circumstances.

"I've tied down all the chairs." Owen announced, trying hard to stop himself slowly doing backflips. "But Jack still hasn't found that damn explosive yet, or my wallet."

"See, that's the value of handbags." Gwen told him. "Much easier to find."

"Yeah, pity yours was open, isn't it?"

Gwen shot him a Look. "Anyway," She began her report. "The weevils are decidedly not happy, apart from Janet, who's bouncing off the walls. And that green blobby thing from Krishken-wherever is currently decorating the walls, so it probably got overstressed. Jack said they got nervous easily. And I haven't found Myfanwy yet."

"What's happening with the archives?"

"It doesn't seem to have affected there. I looked at the cameras. But when I went to check the armaments store beforehand I found that, well, the anti-gravity field sort of follows us around. That's probably why it's not affecting Cardiff."

"You mean it's only active round us?" Owen asked. He found himself floating away from the conversation and kicked off a pillar to try and bring himself back down. He only succeeded in executing another backflip. Damn it if this was the way he wanted to spend his birthday.

"That would make sense." Tosh theorised. "The wish was that we could fly, not that everything could."

"So what happened to the armaments store?" Ianto asked. There was a nagging suspicion in his mind. Something to do with the distant bang he'd heard earlier, possibly.

"Ah… The collection of grenades is significantly smaller than it was. On the bright side, the protective walls do their job. Only they're now significantly smaller too, judging from the size of the explosion."

"This was from the other side of the door?" Tosh clarified.

"Yes."

"Well obviously." Owen pointed out, continued annoyance at the loss of his wish adding extra sharpness to his sarcasm. "Otherwise Gwen would be 'significantly smaller' too."

"Got it!" Jack descended slowly but triumphantly, clutching a secure container to his chest. "I'll go store it in a room we don't like much, in case it still goes off. Where needs redecorating?"

"The armaments store?" Tosh suggested coyly.

"Huh?"

Gwen shook her head. "You can't. It's gone into some kind of lock-down."

"Oh well. My bedroom could do with an extension."

Ianto sighed as Jack floated off. "What else is left?"

"Lots of small items, but none of them breakable." Tosh reported. "Mostly it's the paper from Owen's desk."

Another sigh. "The three-foot tall pile I kept asking him to put away?"

"That's the one."

"May as well just let that all fall back down." Jack advised. "It'll be easier to clear up when it's back on the floor."

Owen shook a hateful look at Tosh. Thanks to her half of his birthday was going to be taken up by a massive clean-up operation.

"Alright then." Jack took the wish-machine carefully. He checked the piece of paper where he had written out exactly what he wanted to say. They weren't taking any more chances. "I wish that the gravity field around the five members of Torchwood Three, both individually and collectively, would return to the normal level for planet Earth at the current stage in its lifetime."

"Duck!" Yelled Ianto, diving under the desk he'd been holding onto as the sky plummeted. He felt a hole-punch bounce off his foot.

The others weren't so lucky. "Jack! You're bloody heavy! Get off!"

"I can't! Tosh is on top of me!"

"Yeah, well you're not on the bottom. If I'd wanted two girls sat on top of me for my birthday I would have wished for it!"

"And you think I like being crushed between you two?"

"Tosh! Get up!"

"I can't! One of you is trapping my leg!"

Ianto crawled out from under his desk and surveyed the sandwich. "How did you all manage to fall on top of one another?" He started to help Tosh disentangle herself.

"I guess someone thought it was funny." Owen growled, nursing his bruised ribs. "And when I find out who I will tell them that I don't."

"Things which hand out wishes have a notorious reputation for misinterpreting requests." Jack told them. "Or even just taking requests too literally. Remember the one about turning everything you touch to gold?

"So what's your last wish going to be?"

"_My _last wish? I didn't get either of the first two!"

"It was fun though."

"Define 'fun', Gwen. Because floating around trying to collect wayward explosives is not my idea of 'fun'."

"How about you wish that we all get a quiet day then?"

"Nice try Ianto. I want something that's just for me."

"Isn't that…" Tosh tried to think of a non-hurtful word, then realised that with Owen it didn't matter. "Isn't that a little selfish?"

"Yep!"

"I'd wish for-"

"Jack, we know what sort of things you'd wish for, thank you."

"No we don't." Ianto murmured. "We just know that we don't want to know."

"How about… a band you want to see, a good night out-"

"A medical breakthrough."

"Or cake or something. No, that's silly…"

"The happiest day of your life?" Gwen rethought. "Or a really good excuse to be miserable?"

"I've already got a really good excuse to be miserable! Does it let you ask for more wishes?"

"No."

"Shit."

"How about visiting somewhere you've always wanted to go?"

"That pigs might fly." Ianto stated serenely.

"That the moon would turn blue." Jack countered.

"I'm trying to think!" Owen put his hands to his head. One wish, and only twenty-odd hours to spend it in. He had to make this good or he'd be kicking himself for the rest of his life.

"That hell would freeze over."

"Lack of rain." Tosh said lamely, still trying to be vaguely helpful.

Gwen gave up too. "I don't know. That the Bay would freeze over?"

"Pizza. Really good pizza."

"That the Hub would clean itself. Thoroughly."

"Free drinks."

"Will you shut up and let me concentrate?"

"De-stressing tablets."

"A house made out of chocolate."

"Or gingerbread."

"Oranges and lemons."

"And the bells of St Clements. Is that right?"

"_I wish you would all just shut the fucking hell up!_"

In retrospect, he couldn't have come up with a better wish.

**This chapter originally got so long it was rather unwieldy, and I had to lop it off a bit early. Which is why I'm going to make you (i.e. any readers who've got this far) an offer. An excellent offer, in fact. And it won't cost you anything apart from a little bit of time. If I reach 15 reviews* I'll post an extra chapter featuring some of this extra content (probably vastly extended, knowing me) about how Jack, Ianto, Tosh and Gwen cope (or fail to cope) with not being able to speak for 24 hours. **

*** **_**Anything in my inbox entitled 'review'. Doesn't have to be long. Can just be a smiley, if you like.**_

**To take up this once-in-a-lifetime guaranteed offer to see everyone immensely pissed off at Owen **_**again**_ **please press the button below. Ta. **


	4. Owen part 2

**To demonstrate that I pay more attention to what my public wants than certain Torchwood writers with an initial for a middle name whom I could mention, I have bowed under the weight of a downpour of reviews and written this. **

**Thank you to my amazingly fabulous reviewers and senders of hugs and smilies: EvenAngelsCrySometimes, Chaos 'shade' Shadow, brionyjae, Madame Cyanure, , taylorpatta, NikkieSheepie, Eleanor Harkness-Jones, Chalcedony Rivers, L.A.H.H., Elodin and lenceilin! **

Owen – part 2

_Did I really just wish that? Will it actually, actually come true? _

Owen looked up to check. The others were glaring at him mutinously, at least one of them having just been cut off mid-sentence. Jack opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. Owen began to grin. It was a grin that Ianto would have described as 'malicious', if he was in any position to make his opinion known.

"You can't speak, can you?" The doctor was practically bouncing now, and didn't seem to care one jot that no-one could answer his question. "Why didn't I think of this earlier? I spent all day listening to you jabbering on and wasting my wishes – hey, you can't even interrupt to tell me to shut up! I can-"

A brief scuffle involving Jack preventing Gwen from leaping at Owen's throat proved his words wrong, and the looks he was getting hinted that at this rate they would not shrink from shutting him up physically.

_Undo it _now_!_

"I can't." Owen replied smugly in response to Gwen's unspoken, yet clear, demand. "That's my third wish - or can't you count? You lot are going to be like this until this time tomorrow. And I'm going to enjoy every single second of it."

He was too. This was better than he could ever have hoped for.

* * *

><p>Free from Tosh's techno-babble, free from Gwen's chattering, free from Jack's boasting and teasing and Ianto's sly one-liners. God, he was going to get a bollocking for this tomorrow, but right now it was worth every minute.<p>

Even better, there's no way anyone was going to be singing him 'Happy Birthday'. He'd once commented, probably at some time around Tosh's birthday, that it was the most annoying song in the universe. For once Jack hadn't corrected him, and Owen reckoned that since Jack had probably heard more songs than anyone else he knew, if even he didn't disagree then 'Happy Birthday' probably was, indeed, the most annoying song in the universe.

Naturally, thoughts like this led to a loud, out-of-tune rendition of 'Happy Birthday'. It wasn't half as bad when you weren't the one being irritated by it.

* * *

><p><em>IM conversation<em>

Gwen: I can't stand this much longer

Tosh: It's his birthday

Gwen: I don't care anymore. Are you sure there's no way we can undo this?

Jack: Actually…

Tosh: What?

Jack: I was about to say that there was a fourth wish and we couldn't use it because we can't speak…

Ianto: But that would be a lie

Jack: Exactly

Tosh: It's not really that bad.

Gwen: No offence Tosh, but you don't actually speak much anyway

Jack: Whereas Gwen here…

Gwen: No, it's not that. It's more, well

Tosh: More what?

Gwen: What he said to Rhys

Jack: What did he say?

Tosh: Gwen?

Gwen: Just leave it

Ianto: Actually, I think it's more what Rhys said back

Gwen: Ianto, don't

Jack: Remember my gossip for pay-rise scheme?

Gwen: Please, Ianto….

Ianto: Owen told Rhys what had happened. I think he'd rung and Owen snatched the phone off Gwen and answered it.

Tosh: And what did Rhys say?

Gwen: Ianto!

Ianto: It was along the lines of 'Really? How soon is she coming home?' Sorry, Gwen.

Jack: thought so

Gwen: Bloody bastards, the lot of you

Ianto: Back to the story - then Gwen made a rather… graphic gesture which I think was meant for both of them

Gwen: It'll be for all of you if you're not careful

Jack: Whoah, now I'm scared

Ianto: …which Owen described in full detail to Rhys over the phone

Jack: Bet he loved that

Gwen: Thanks, Ianto. Anyway, can I stay here tonight?

Jack: Do my eyes deceive me?

Ianto: Sorry?

Gwen: Not like that. I just don't want to go home and get laughed at again

Tosh: I'm sure Rhys wouldn't

Gwen: Oh, he would. Because he knows I would. And because he had a sore throat two weeks ago.

Ianto: So really you're just avoiding your just desserts

Gwen: Who doesn't?

Tosh: So what are we doing about Owen?

Jack: How graphic was Gwen's gesture?

Gwen: For Owen? At the moment? Not graphic enough.

Ianto: So singing out-of-tune and asking persistent questions is even more annoying than stealing your phone?

Gwen: Yes

Tosh: Agreed

Jack: I thought you were for leaving him?

Tosh: He just asked me to explain how the Rift-predictor works.

Gwen: I thought it didn't. Work, that is. That's why I got trapped in a car in the middle of a field with Jack writing rude words on my arm

Jack: I was trying to beat Ianto at hangman

Gwen: Why was there a permanent marker in the SUV anyway? And why didn't you damn well tell me it was permanent before you used it?

Ianto: Told you we should have played join-the-dots with the freckles. And if you're lucky it should wash off in this rain.

Tosh: What rain?

Ianto: The rain we're going to have to go out in to see why we've got a loony weevil on the loose.

Jack: Alright, normal positions. I want you all out there. And someone go and shove this screen in Owen's face.

* * *

><p>"Hey, I get to do the spiel, right! Everything you lot normally say." Owen glances at Tosh's laptop screen from where he is sat in the back. "Right. A weevil has gone barmy somewhere in the back-streets off the city centre at grid reference… at a grid reference I can't see because Tosh's hair is in the way. And that's the point when someone, probably Gwen, would ask Jack and Ianto to clarify what they mean by 'barmy'. By which they mean…" Owen peered closer at the screen. "That said weevil is dancing around, has torn its boiler suit off and jumps on everything moving that happens to come its way. Which so far includes two stray cats and a lot of pigeons, so at least we're keeping the pests down. And then in the conversation someone would probably make a nasty little comment about keeping other pests down too: either me about Ianto or Ianto about me. And if it was me Gwen would put on a cross voice and tell me to stop it. And Jack would say something about the weevil being unpredictable and tell us to use stun guns. Oh look, we're there."<p>

Tosh wished that she could tell Owen that they were only mute, not blind as well. Ianto just winced as Owen puts on a loud accent which was probably meant to be American.

"Right, team! Split up, keep together, take the usual formation…" Owen racks his brain for any more of Jack's standard remarks. "Keep your comms open and- mmmph."

Jack kept his hand firmly over Owen's mouth as Gwen performed an exaggerated pantomime simplified for the medic's benefit. A single finger raised to the lips – _Keep quiet - _Gwen's eyes widened - _or _– she drew her finger across her throat.

Owen nodded. Jack removed his hand and cast him a meaningful glance. Owen hazarded a guess and translated: "Err, let's go get 'em."

* * *

><p>'Communication is vital on missions.' That was what Jack had always told them.<p>

Ianto listens to Owen's inane babbling in his ear, his attention divided. _"No sign of it down here and Tosh's tracker-thing seems to have lost the trail. How 'bout you and Gwen? I dunno, sneeze or something if you've seen it." _

_It's down here! _Ianto mind screams at his comms… _ There is a huge enraged alien with a lot of teeth at the top of this alley and we're at the bottom of the alley and the alley doesn't have another exit! And in a moment it's going to realise that we taste nicer than pigeons! _

The comms don't do mind-signals.

A sharp static noise hits his ears and he glances back to see Gwen tapping her comms against the wall in some attempt at an SOS signal, the other hand aiming a gun at the weevil. He gives her the hand-signal to hold fire.

"_Oy! What the fuck are you doing?"_

The weevil looks up and Ianto takes his chances and shoots.

* * *

><p>"That definitely wasn't a normal weevil." Owen tells them, as though they haven't already worked this out. "Normally, as you know, weevils go for the throat. Not for the liver. That's just bloody <em>weird<em>. But useful, 'cos otherwise Ianto would have lost his ability to speak _permanently,_ rather than just having a few scars on his stomach. And then we'd have to find someone else to answer the phones."

Ianto bristles at this belittling of his war-wound, but can't really say anything in protest. And Owen is right, after all.

Gwen shares a long-suffering glance with him as Jack attends to the scratches on her arm.

_Thanks for saving my life. _He tries to tell her. _Again. _He's lost track of where they are on the tally now. He's probably still winning.

She gives him an eye roll. _Last time I step between you and an angry weevil. _

"You're both idiots, you know that? Why head down the only alley with no escape route? And can't you even scream or anything?"

Tosh shakes her head briskly. As this wearisome day rolls on she is getting more and more irritated by Owen, and it is beginning to show.

"I didn't want to have to spend my birthday patching people up. Where did the bloody thing go anyway? I can't believe you let it get away."

_We shot it twice. _Gwen thinks angrily. She's going to shake Owen soon, she really is. _It can't exactly have got far. _

Jack hands round a set of hastily-scrawled instructions. Ianto always carrys a biro.

'_Gwen & Ianto: go back to Hub. Tosh & Owen come with me.'_

* * *

><p>Gwen lounged back in the chair. Typing instructions to Tosh was so slow, especially when she'd been told not to use her left arm, but they'd got there in the end.<p>

She wanders over to where Ianto has collapsed on the sofa and gives him the thumbs up. He brightens immediately.

"_Gwen?" _God, why can't she get rid of Owen? Bloody comms. "_Jack's going to stay here and clean up, but we need someone to bring the SUV round and collect me and Tosh and this lump of a weevil." _On the other end of the line Owen pauses. _"I'm taking silence as a 'yes'." _

_Bollocks_

Ianto's eyes blink open at the crash. He really hopes they get their voices back soon, because when deprived of a verbal outlet Gwen tends to go for more physical ones. And he'd quite liked that coffee mug.

* * *

><p>Gwen doesn't like today much at the moment. Not since the incident when Owen had taken their voices away. Tosh and Ianto didn't seem to have taken this too badly, but then again, Tosh didn't rely on her voice that much, and Ianto never really showed his emotions anyway. But she could tell that it was frustrating Jack, who couldn't give orders as quickly as he needed to, and as a consequence was watching his team get hurt. And as for Gwen, she'd had to drive across the city twice with one arm in bandages, all because of Owen's stupid wish, only to be told by some officious bastard of a doctor that she shouldn't be driving anyway.<p>

* * *

><p>Owen has only just come up from the cells after dumping their newest occupant when Gwen thrusts a still-ringing mobile in his face.<p>

"Yeah, yeah what? Is this Rhys again? No? Andy? Who? Oh, yeah, Gwen's police friend."

"_That's PC Andy Davidson, thanks. Where's Gwen?" _

"Not available at the moment. You're stuck with me. Hope that's a problem."

"_I'm speaking in my official capacity here… Look, we've taken Jack Harkness in, ok? But he's refusing to bloody well speak to us. So will you tell Gwen to come over here and get him to cooperate?"_

"Hasn't he just flashed his Torchwood card at you yet?"

"_No. And frankly, none of us want to let him go just yet. Not when there's one of your lot in here every other week clogging up the cells and we have to keep you there until he comes along and flashes his damn card." _

"And everything else."

"_Just send Gwen."_

* * *

><p>"Ah, hello. Are you the person I spoke to on the phone?"<p>

"Yep. Dr Owen Harper. And I've brought Gwen, as requested."

Gwen contrives to glare at Owen while smiling a hello at Andy.

"She can't speak either." Owen continues. "None of them can. 'Cept me. It's been brilliant so far, when they haven't been trying to get themselves killed or getting themselves arrested."

"Er… right. Well, can you fill in the papers?" Andy goes on to explain to them both as he finds the files. "We found him with a bag collecting dead pigeons and the duty officer took him in because … well, it all looked a bit suspicious, really. And then there were all these cat corpses too, and harming living creatures is an offence under the animal treatment act. I would say it was all a huge mix-up, but I know your lot better by now. You're probably sacrificing pets for some esoteric ritual or something. Why can't she speak anyway?"

"Long story." Owen signs his name with a flourish. "I don't know his real name or his date of birth, but I put down a guess based on his estimated mental age. Did you want me as a witness?"

"A witness?" Another police officer asks. Owen recognises him vaguely as one of the senior officers whose crime scenes they keep barging in on and taking over. He suddenly realises that he's surrounded by people who are constantly getting incredibly pissed off by Torchwood in general and by Jack in particular, and senses a brilliant opportunity.

"Yeah, a witness. To his abuse of animals."

The senior officer looks interested and calls in someone else too. "What did you say your name was?"

"Owen Harper. Doctor." That always carries a bit of weight.

Gwen is throwing him worried looks, but he ignores her.

"And what did you say about Mr Harkness…?"

"He abuses animals. Regularly. Normally cats, but I saw him with a dog once…"

Gwen is shaking her head frantically now. Andy clears his throat. "I'm not sure this is reliable testimony. Can you give, er, specific instances or times?"

"Err, no. Not really. This is the worst it's got, and…" Owen knows he's losing this one. But no, because there was always… "Tell you something worse. He _was _behind that bank raid last week. Lloyds, wasn't it? On the high street? The one you didn't solve?"

The aide whispers something in the officer's ear. Owen nearly grins. He's got them hooked now. And Gwen is glaring daggers at him.

"What else do you know about this incident? How do you know Captain Harkness was responsible?"

"He told me about it. Boasted. There were two of them, weren't there, in balaclavas? And they threatened one of the night security guards with a hand-gun and stunned the rest, then knocked out most of the cameras. Bet you haven't work out how he did that yet, have you? Or why most of the staff can't remember a thing? And then they broke into one of the high security vaults and took the contents, but they didn't touch anything else."

"It certainly sounds like-"

"And one of them was wearing a greatcoat."

The officer sighs. "Yes. We did suspect. Well then. I don't suppose you know who the accomplice was?"

Owen remembers all the glares he's been getting today, the ones promising that unspecified evil things are going to happen to him as soon as it's no longer his birthday and they don't have to be nice to him anymore. Gwen's making totally different eyes at him now. Pleading ones. "A shorter female? Left behind an earring which fell out? Wouldn't stop moaning about it all week? Think I might know, yeah."

* * *

><p>Jack watches Gwen sink down against the opposite wall of the holding cell and damn well wishes he could say something suitably witty.<p>

He's going to kill Owen Harper when they get out, if he can stop Gwen from getting to him first.

* * *

><p>Owen smiles smugly, gazing out over the dark depths of the Bay like he'd personally ordered it to be there. So yeah, other people had screwed up several of his wishes. But on his birthday they had practically turned the Hub upside down and blown up most of Torchwood's explosives in one go. And, thanks to the most amazing wish he had ever thought up, he had been spared a day of bickering, long-winded explanations, polite remarks about his state of dress, less than polite remarks about that and everything else, coffee orders, more coffee orders, swearing, employees flirting with other employees, and co-workers generally being verbally annoying. Add to that Tea-boy's minor injury and the fact that he had managed to get both Jack and Gwen arrested, and that at the end of the day Tosh – <em>Tosh<em>, of all people – had slapped him, thus helping him win a long-term bet against Ianto that he would never get her worked up enough to do that, well…

Yes, it had been a good day.

Tomorrow he was going to have to take a post-birthday trip and get himself as far away as possible from Cardiff. Maybe the Caribbean? After all, it would be unnecessarily cruel to let Ianto go to all the trouble of getting Jack and Gwen let off only to have them arrested straight away again for murder.

**So, my chapter extra ended up longer than the original chapter. How very me. It just sort of… got carried away with itself again.**

**After the grand success of last week's offer it's tempting to suggest that for, say, a grand total of 40 reviews I'll get the character with the most votes naked, or something of that ilk. But that would be exploitative, and since it _is_ Jack's birthday I expect he has a lot of party games with the prefix 'strip' or 'naked' in mind regardless. But hell, I might just do it anyway. Possibly. And all reviews with suggestions for truths, dares or other games will be most welcome, although I can't guarantee that the Torchwood team will actually agree to go along with them. **


	5. Jack

**After a week of intensive research, in which I didn't catch a single glimpse of Cardiff but did attend a surprise birthday and play a particularly long and silly game of pass-the-parcel, I have come up with this. Sorry for the wait. **

**WARNING! This chapter contains bad language, alcohol, inappropriate suggestions and comments (aka – suggestions and comments of any sort that happen to be made by Jack), victimisation, a particularly violent death scene for a certain much-loved character, and a bent teaspoon. **

**Thank you to my super-amazing-araf! reviewers: Madam Cyanure, Eleanor Harkness-Jones, insert-witty-comment-here, L.A.H.H., Chalcedony Rivers, brionyjae and GallifreyenCultOfSkaro! Particularly to Madam Cyanure, who made the suggestion about Ianto, which I manged to find a way to include eventually. **

Jack 

To: T. Sato, O. Harper, I. Jones

From: G. Cooper

Subject: Jack's birthday

Yes, I know he won't tell us when it is. But I asked him and he said he's decided to have it next Saturday because he 'feels like that'll be a good day'. (Is it really his birthday then? Does anyone know?) And he says he'll give us the day afterwards off 'to recover' so long as it's quiet.

He also says that he'll prepare it himself. I think the phrase he used was 'get things ready'.

I'm so so sorry. I really am. Is there _any_ way that we can possibly get out of this without him suspecting? Tosh – could you rig up a rift alert for Saturday? Or something with that strand of alien flu that Owen found last week? Because otherwise we're just going to have to go through with it. I really don't want to let him down, but…

I'm so so so so so so so sorry.

* * *

><p>To: T. Sato, I. Jones, G. Cooper<p>

From: O. Harper

Subject: RE Jack's birthday

You better be bloody sorry. Have you any idea what that man will be thinking up right now? And do you really think he wouldn't be suspicious if we all came out in purple spots? God, Gwen, you deserve everything he gives you - and I'm so so so so so sorry that I'm not going to be there to watch.

We have two options:

1) We retcon him.

2) We tie Ianto up naked in his office and make a run for it while he's distracted.

* * *

><p>To: T. Sato, G. Cooper, O. Harper<p>

From: I. Jones

Subject: RE Jack's birthday

1) No

2) No

* * *

><p>To: I. Jones, G. Cooper, O. Harper<p>

From: T. Sato

Subject: RE Jack's birthday

I hate to say this, but I could probably rig up a false Rift alert, or a phonecall to get us out of Cardiff for the day.

* * *

><p>To: I. Jones, G. Cooper, O. Harper, T. Sato<p>

From: J. Harkness

Subject: RE Jack's birthday

If anyone already has plans for Saturday (for example if you have an outbreak of alien illness marked down in your diary) then I am happy to reschedule.

Otherwise: Be there. No sudden accidents, no unplanned Rift alerts, no boyfriends calling up demanding that you come home early… nothing.

That was an order, not a request.

* * *

><p>To: T. Sato, I. Jones, G. Cooper<p>

From: O. Harper

Subject: RE Jack's birthday

Several hundred years, and Jack still doesn't seem to have mastered the art of the birthday invite.

* * *

><p>"Do we really need this much alcohol?"<p>

Owen eyed the impressively high pile and pondered whether Tosh's question merited answering.

"For what I've got planned, yes."

Gwen slumped down in a chair, eyeing Jack as he finished this remark. "Are you just trying to scare us or are you actually….?"

"Wait and see."

"Oh, I can't wait." Owen managed to convey the total opposite of enthusiasm in his flat tone as he grabbed the nearest bottle. He aired his advice to the rest of them: "Better start drinking now, and put some retcon aside for later."

"What were you thinking of anyway?" Ianto asked cautiously. "You can tell us now."

"Just the usual kids party games. I've got a pass-the-parcel ready, and then I thought something fun like sardines or blind man's buff…"

"Would that be naked sardines and strip blind man's buff?"

"Excellent idea, Gwen! If you want-"

"We don't want it Jack, and you know it." Tosh informed him.

"Ah, but you will do by the time we've got through half of that." Jack indicated their stock of booze. With a sudden sense of dread Owen realised that Jack was probably right. He had seen the others drunk before, and that was bad enough, but never during an all-night party in the privacy of the Hub. With Jack. Had they turned the cameras off? And did he really want them off anyway?

"Look, Jack, you keep telling me I'm supposed to have a normal relationship and everything, and now you expect us to, well-"

"Gwen, relax. Nothing bad is going to happen. The Rift is quiet, I'm having a birthday party and we're all going to have fun for once. We'll just start off with normal pass-the-parcel, that's all."

"Pass-the-parcel?" Gwen's eyebrows are raised.

"Just normal pass-the-parcel. Like you played when you were a kid."

Gwen gives in to Owen's philosophy and grabs a bottle. "Ok."

* * *

><p>"I think, I think…" Tosh blushed a brilliant pink.<p>

"What, Tosh?" Owen tried to peer over at the piece of paper she had unwrapped to see what was written on it. "It's not for kids at all, is it? Bloody Harkness, should never have let-"

"No, it's… _too _childish. It's, well…"

Owen grabbed it off her and read it aloud. "_'Sing _'_I'm a little tea pot'_ with actions_.'_"

* * *

><p>'<em>Pull a weevil face.'<em>

A pause.

"That was very good Owen. Very… convincing."

"Yeah, well I've been working with them a lot. You just have to sort of snarl, and grimace."

"So it's not really that different from your normal expression."

"Watch it Ianto, or I'll rip your throat out."

* * *

><p>"Oh, it's just a hug." Gwen looked relieved. "Person to the right. That's you Tosh. Sorry."<p>

"It's fine."

"See, not sexual at all."

"Yeah, thanks Jack."

* * *

><p>'<em>The victim must publicly declare their true and undying love for the person of Jack's choice (or Ianto's choice, if Jack gets this dare) for at least one minute.' <em>

"It would be your bloody choice, wouldn't it, Harkness?" Owen threw the piece of paper across the room. "Seeing as you wrote the stupid things."

"You have to do it."

"Yeah yeah yeah."

Jack looked round at the circle of unwilling victims. Apparently the alcohol only went so far at this stage. He briefly considered giving Owen Ianto, just to watch the ensuing fireworks, or even himself. Owen would probably rather tear his own guts out than compliment either of them. "Tosh."

Toshiko's face turned a colour which went very well with Ianto's favourite red shirt. "Me?"

"Stopwatch ready."

Owen looked pale. "Give me some time to think!"

"But Tosh has loads of good qualities! She's amazingly intelligent, brave, gor-"

"Gwen! Stop giving him things to say!"

"Err… I declare my true and unending love… How long was it again?"

"A minute."

"I declare my true and unending love. I declare my true and unending love. I declare my true and –"

"Not happening. Try being creative and original. And no 'roses are red' wishy-washy stuff."

"Toshiko, your face is as crimson as a rose in bloom, and as far as I am aware not one bit of you is blue. Er… you are the cleverest woman I've ever met and you know so much about computers that you possibly have one for your brain, but Jack won't let me check. You, um, are in very good health with all your organs fully functioning and average blood-pressure-"

"Owen, this is a declaration of love, not a medical assessment."

"- And a nice enough figure that I wish the rules allowed me to do more compulsory full health check-ups a year. Bet one of you will hit me for that later, but it's true. And, err, eyes like, like really nice eyes, and a lovely nose, and great legs – is this not a minute yet?"

"Not quite."

"Very kind and you fix my computer for me when I break it, even when I do it deliberately, and you don't yell at me as much as Gwen, and I could praise you for ever… That must be a minute by now!"

"Nope."

"You don't have horrible parties like Jack and, and, your tea doesn't come with a free snide comment.….Er…"

"Hesitation!" Jack cried out happily.

"You're really really really amazing and I would jump in front of a weevil for you if you paid me enough, you're really clever…"

"Repetition!"

"Sod it!" Owen grabbed the stopwatch. "Ianto, you lying little bastard, that's a minute and a half!"

* * *

><p>"Player to your left… That's you again, Tosh."<p>

Tosh rubbed her forehead. "What this time?"

Ianto glanced down at his scrap of paper. He was actually quite enjoying this. "A piggyback ride round the Hub."

"Oh."

"That's a kid's thing, isn't it?" Jack looked slightly put-out, as though someone was trying to accuse him of improper suggestions again. "How about I grab Gwen and we have a race? Last one back… has to down a pint."

"You're on."

* * *

><p>Dares were far better when you were the referee for a change. "Ianto, you win, even though you cheated a bit by the lift and knocked all those chairs over." Owen smirked at Jack. "<em>You <em>cheated from the start – it said a piggy-back ride, not some sort of fireman's lift. And then you went and dropped her anyway."

Jack accepted his penalty with an unconcerned ease which made Owen want to introduce his fist to his face. But that was quite dangerous with Jack, and generally he found Gwen to be an easier target in these situations anyway. "You too."

"Me? But I didn't even want to do that! Just because Jack scooped me up and hauled me round the room and bloody _dropped _me…"

"Alright, alright, skip it!"

* * *

><p>"How come Jack hasn't had one yet?"<p>

Ianto tried not to glance sidelong at Jack. It was all a bit suspicious.

Tosh explained yet again. "The music's being controlled by the computers. It's random."

"Yeah, you think." Owen muttered darkly.

* * *

><p>"Aha! He has got one! Serves him bloody well right, having to do one of his own dares!" Owen crowed, craning round Gwen to try and see. "What does it say?"<p>

Ianto retrieved the scrap and read it out loud. "'Do a handstand'_._"

The uproar was instantaneous.

"But that's not fair! How come we get all that shite and he gets-"

"Jack, are you cheating somehow, or-?"

Jack raised his hands in the air. "Look, it's just chance. But I'll let you add another condition if you want." He grinned at the thought. "Make it more fun."

Gwen closed her eyes. "Do one on the table of the conference room."

"Whilst balancing a tea-tray on your feet." Tosh suggested happily. Not that she's one for revenge, but this game has made her feel rather undignified so far.

"With mugs of coffee on it." Ianto added.

Owen beamed. "All three."

* * *

><p>"Ok, so that didn't work."<p>

"Yeah, I think we know that thank you, Owen." Gwen stood back to survey the wreckage.

"That is a _lot _of tidying up to do." Tosh murmured. Ianto can only nod.

"Hey, what about me? I'll be bruised all over and I've got coffee stains in my coat."

"Well, you did sign up for it." Gwen reminded him, feeling rather more heartless than usual.

"Fun though." Owen remarked.

* * *

><p>"Jack, I can't do that, I can't…"<p>

"Which one is it?"

Tosh readjusted her glasses and examined the specks on the floor. "The one with the lift."

"Oh, _that _one. I liked that one."

"What is it?" Gwen asked.

"You go on the invisible lift, you step off the invisible lift in the Plass, accost the nearest person, then scarper back."

"Accost them how?" Owen asked, already calculating how many people could safely fit on the lift.

Jack grin stretched even broader than before. "You make a marriage proposal."

* * *

><p>Ok, so maybe Ianto had nearly fallen off the lift on the way back down again because they were all laughing so hard, but Jack thought it was worth it. The look on that eighty-year old woman's face had been priceless, though they would probably have to check round the hospitals tomorrow to make sure she hadn't died from the shock. Even Tosh was giggling hysterically when they tumbled off the lift. Amidst the new round of celebratory drinks (Tosh for one was definitely a lot less reserved after a couple) Jack started the music again.<p>

"You again. What have you got this time?" Gwen prodded Jack with her foot.

"Mmm… Who's to my left?"

"Me, sir."

"Apparently I have to lick your ear." Jack furrowed his brow. "I think I wrote that one with Owen in mind."

"Any particular ear?" Ianto was apparently unphased, a prospect Owen was even more disgusted by.

"The closest one will do."

"That's revolting." Gwen commented amiably, nonetheless continuing to watch. "What does it taste like?"

"The earwax tastes faintly of coffee beans."

"Really?" Tosh asked, half wanting to believe this.

"No. It just tastes like ear wax."

"I do store beans in there from time to time, temporarily."

"I'm really not going to believe that one."

"Had you never wondered why the coffee tastes faintly of earwax? It's the secret ingredient." Ianto handed the parcel to Jack. "Come on, there's not much left. I'm sure you've saved up something hilarious for last."

"I can't remember." Jack confessed, watching as the package passed with lightning speed from Ianto to Gwen, barely skimming Owen's hands in between. He can barely see Tosh's feet for the discarded wrappings.

Owen gave a small cry of triumph as his speed tactics resulted in the parcel landing in Gwen's lap instead of his.

"Oh bloody hell."

"What, what?"

"I need a lighter."

"There aren't any that need lighters." Jack seized the paper. "Oh, _that _one. I see. No need to burn it though."

Owen bounced up and down in his seat. "It better be something good. All she had to do last time was hug Tosh, while I had to fucking serenade her."

Ianto retrieved the piece of paper from Jack. He raised his eyebrows. "That's…"

"Childish." Gwen completed. "And probably something more, I imagine." She stood up. "Sorry Jack."

"You can't back out! No one else has, and it's not even that bad-"

"She's ticklish, sir." Ianto explained.

"No I'm n-"

"Well, I was kind of hoping for that, otherwise it'd be a kinda pointless dare…"

"As in, very ticklish. Very."

"I'm n-"

"How do you know?" Owen asked, scrutinising the slip of paper. This sounded fun, in a particularly Owen way. It also sounded like victimisation – four people ganging up to attempt to tickle someone else to death. But victimisation was fun in Owen's book, so this didn't present many problems.

"Rhys told me."

Jack and Owen looked over at Gwen to see what her response was to the fact that her husband-to-be was divulging such personal information to her co-workers. But she wasn't there.

"Hide and seek!" Jack shouted excitedly.

* * *

><p>"Did Rhys also tell you that she'd scream that loud?"<p>

Ianto rubbed at a developing bruise, trying to work out if it had been caused by Gwen's flailing or by one of the others. It seemed that tickling was contagious. "No, he didn't."

"I suppose that solves the mystery of why he told you then." Owen remarked. "He knew we'd have to try it if we found out. Sadistic bastard."

"Yeah, more fool us."

"Serves you right." Gwen muttered. "Next time you try it I'll do my best to make you permanently deaf."

"You know," Jack began. "I've never met anyone so ticklish. Not counting those pink things on Ahskion, and they'd go into hysterics if you so much as breathed on them. And then implode. Very strange species, not particularly well-designed. But great at-"

Tosh interrupted what they knew from experience was going to turn into an incredibly long and detailed account of one of Jack's adventures. "Owen isn't very ticklish at all."

"And he's also considerably fatter than normal." Ianto added snidely.

"Hey!"

"How many shirts have you got on?"

"I dunno. Five? I couldn't fit any more on."

"Five?" Jack asked incredulously.

"He thought you were going to play some kind of game along the lines of strip poker." Gwen explained.

"Uh huh. So what about the rest of you?"

"Two t-shirts," Tosh admitted. "Three pairs of socks and tights under my jeans."

Ianto just shrugged. "Hopefully you won't find out."

"Gwen?"

"Do you think I'd be that bloody ticklish if I had more than one pair of socks on?"

"True. I suppose we'll have to play a game like that now you've all set me such a challenge."

Ianto cleared his throat, hoping to distract Jack from this course of action. "We still haven't finished pass-the-parcel, sir."

"Oh yes. Put the music on again then."

* * *

><p>"Last layer." Ianto announced as he ripped it off.<p>

"Thank god. Can we all go home now?"

"This is an all night party, Gwen, and none of us have got anywhere near as drunk enough yet."

Owen sighed melodramatically. "Pity. Perhaps Ianto can cheer us all up?"

"I have to perform my best dramatic slow death scene for you."

"Brilliant! Do we get to choose how we kill you?"

"Nope." Jack replied cheerfully. "It's Ianto's choice how he pretends to die. Note that word, Owen. _Pretends_."

"In that case I think I would like to slowly hack myself to death with a blunt teaspoon out of horrific guilt for just having brutally murdered you all." Ianto paused to admire this idea. "Can we do the murders too?"

"Yes. Pretend murders, that is."

"Of course. I'll just go and fetch a spoon."

* * *

><p>"Ianto, do you have to be quite so brutal?" Tosh's pleas for mercy were the politest Ianto had ever heard, and considerably politer than Owen's.<p>

"It's fine for you; you have extra layers on." Gwen huffed. "And that teaspoon _hurts._"

"Well, obviously it's only blunt because I've just stabbed you all with it."

* * *

><p>"…Ah, alas, woe is me! For in a fit of madness I have killed my friends, my noble comrades, the saviours of Cardiff! Torchwood is dead! The streets will overflow with weevils, spaceships will fill the skies…. How can I bear it? The guilt, the agony… I must die here amidst my friends, having betrayed the only ones I love! But alas, my tea spoon is blunt and has little brown stains on it! Yet it is my only way out of this pit of misery and soul-destroying guilt, and…"<p>

"Ianto, get the hell on with it!"

"…Look! The blood-stained ghost of Owen speaks to me, he shows me all my crimes, he raises his hands towards me…"

"It'll be my bloody fists in a minute. Just kill yourself! You've taken nearly ten minutes already!"

"…Ah, ah! I will saw off my little finger first…"

"We're not going to wait here while-"

"…My eyes, my eyes! I am blind! Oh, that I may never look upon my dear friends' faces again! I will embrace their poor dead bodies to me…"

"Ianto, that's my foot!"

"...And insert the handle of this spoon delicately into my ribcage, so that our blood runs mingled and pools to form horrible little sticky stains that I will never, never have to clean up again! No more coffee! No more archives! Oh, this is a fateful day! Argh, aargh, the spoon is in my ribs, still warm with their blood! Alas! I am dying! Maybe I shouldn't have done that after all. But now it is too late! And I'm wearing my best shirt too…"

"Just die! It didn't take any of us that long!"

"…Oh, oh, whose face is this my hands reach for?"

"Mine. Get off!"

"…I hear their voices in my head, still pleading with me! Where is the spoon? I must stab myself again, and again, until at last this wretched body falls still upon the floor…"

"Here it is."

"…Argh! Woe is me! Ouch! Ow!..."

"Ianto."

"…Ow, ow, ow…."

"Ianto, please stop soon."

"…, ouch, ow."

"Is he dead?"

"No, for I yet writhe out my paltry life upon the floor…"

"There. He's dead."

"Owen, that was cruel and unnecessary."

"Are you dead now?"

"Yes sir."

"Definitely?"

Ianto nodded and tapped the spoon against his nose. "I'll fill the paperwork out for it in the morning. Bother."

"What?"

"I bent the spoon."

**These just keep getting longer and longer, don't they? And this is yet again one where I had to remove extra content, so maybe, just maybe, there is an extra chapter in store. Forty reviews (ish), and I'll continue, with more fun and games (quite literally) so long as you provide a handful of suggestions. Cos I'm pretty stumped for dares at the moment. **

**So, press below to take advantage of yet another ****amazing offer. ****You know the drill. **


	6. Jack part 2

**I'm giving you this anyway because I feel mean for demanding reviews so often. From now on, I won't do it. That doesn't mean I'll stop being a review-junkie, but I know I'm not always great personally on reviewing, so it seems unfair to demand them off others. **

**Of course, I'm still going to personally thank each one of you, even though no one ever reads this section: Madame Cyanure (who gets a super-huge thank you due to our long conversation about exactly how Torchwood would act while drunk and her idea about the weevil), Chalcedony Rivers, Eleanor Harkness-Jones, insert-witty-comment-here, L.A.H.H. and brionyjae! **

_Blind man's buff_

"Got you!" Owen sounded immensely pleased with himself. It had taken Tosh nearly ten minutes before Ianto had taken pity on her and 'accidentally' stumbled into her path. Admittedly, Ianto had proceeded to catch Owen with the speed of a praying mantis, but then Owen was _sure _that Ianto had some alien blood somewhere, whatever the gene tests kept telling him. "Definitely one of the girls. Which narrows it down to two."

"Owen, blind man's buff is not an excuse to grope the other players."

"Course it is. Why the hell do you think Harkness put it in? And it wasn't intentional, my hand just _happened _to land there, ok? I reckon this is Tosh, 'cos Gwen would have screamed by now and hit me."

"Wrong." Gwen crowed, glad that self-restraint had paid off.

"Hey, don't I get another guess?"

"Do the maths, Owen. And it's your go again."

* * *

><p><em><span>Pin the tail on the weevil<span>_

"Weevils don't have tails."

"Shut up Gwen. Don't spoil it just because you're not a drunk as everyone else." Owen had begun to slur slightly, and was getting increasingly suspicious - when his mind would let him - that the latest round of cocktails Jack had served contained more than just alcohol and fruit juice.

"Yeah, well _you'd_ probably find it harder _without_ the blindfold, at this stage. Ianto, how did you do that?"

"I've got a good sense of direction." The cardboard cut-out was now sprouting a tail in exactly the place you'd expect a tail to be, if weevils had them.

"But Jack must have spun you around at least twenty times."

"Next round:" Owen announced, slightly put out. Gwen, Tosh and Ianto had collapsed in a heap of tipsy giggles when on his go he'd been unable to find the weevil-target at all. "Pin the boiler suit on Janet."

* * *

><p><em><span>Sardines<span>_

"Found you!" Tosh whispered, slightly too loudly.

Jack put a finger to his lips and mock-shushes her before squeezing further back into the cupboard.

"I was fairly certain you'd come here." She told him, with the same hint of quiet pride he'd normally get off her when she'd cracked a particularly complex alien code. "You know we won't all fit, don't you?"

"Yep. I measured it earlier."

* * *

><p><em><span>Three-legged race<span>_

Myfanwy squawked in disapproval and incomprehension – her species are not inclined to try and fly around with their wings bound together for fun. And her nest-mates are being very noisy and keep knocking over furniture while she is trying to sleep. And singing. She likes it when The-One-Who-Smells-Of-Coffee-And-Brings-Chocolate sings to her, but The-Loud-Grumpy-One is not so good.

"_All things bright and beautiful, all creatures big and small! All things wise and… wonderful, the Lord God made them all…!"_

"When did we get on to hymns?" Tosh asked, before Owen's unexpected and unplanned hug knocked both her and Gwen over, still tied together in their attempt at a three-legged race.

"_All things wise and beautiful, all Toshes bright and small!"_

* * *

><p>Gwen giggled. She seemed to be giggling a lot recently. But then things seemed a lot funnier at the moment. "Where shall we hide the coffee?"<p>

Owen considered. "The autopsy bay. My fridge. Next to… next to the pizza, behind the, the blue squishy thing."

"Kay!"

Jack watched as he chased after her, still giggling, and decided that it might be a good idea to tell Ianto.

"Ianto!"

The man in question raised his head from Jack's shoulder. "Mmhmm? Jack?"

"I… can't remember. Say, that weevil's cute."

Ianto tried to form a sentence together. "Cardboard. It's cardboard."

Jack shrugged. "Still cute. Hey, it winked at me."

Ianto allowed his body to slump sideways onto the sofa as Jack's shoulder stopped supporting it. Part of his brain which is still making pithy comments notes that Gwen and Owen are screaming exactly like primary school children in the playground as they run round, only the filth being smeared in Gwen's hair is more likely to be alien entrails than mud.

A very, very small part of his brain says 'that will need clearing up', but is diverted to work on the problem of how Tosh can manage to giggle so much while hiccupping.

"Tosh, how do you, you know…"

"Sshhh. Jack's –hic- chatting up the weevil. Hic."

* * *

><p><em><span>The inevitable game<span>_

"I… I can't play this."

"We've noticed." Tosh tried to stop her eyes wandering.

"Four pairs!" Owen declared triumphantly. Gwen wondered for a moment whether he meant cards, but then realised that they were talking socks.

"Shouldn't play this while drunk."

"Are we drunk?"

"Probably."

"More fun drunk."

"Yeah."

"Ooh, snap!"

* * *

><p>Ianto wakes up and someone tries to hit him with a sledgehammer. No, someone <em>had <em>hit him with a sledgehammer… No...

Jack had got them drunk.

Ianto's brain works hard and arrives at a conclusion: Painkillers. He opens his eyes and surveys the situation, pleased that he has managed to keep both shirt and trousers.

This seems to be a rare achievement.

There are more discarded clothes on the floor than could conceivably come from only five people, until you factor in Owen and Tosh's multiple layers. His head has been resting on one of Tosh's t-shirts, but thankfully she's still wearing this one. That's about it though. He doesn't check, but glancing round there does at least look to be a marked absence of ladies' underthings on the floor. An abandoned bra, yes, but he can't remember enough of last night to identify it.

Gwen is asleep on the sofa, hair mussed up and one hand trailing on the floor. Ianto runs that sentence through his head again: 'passed out' might be a more accurate term. She seems to have acquired Jack's coat during the evening's revelries, though Ianto can't remember when or how. The small spark of unintended jealously ignites his headache in a new wave and forces him to his feet and down the stairs.

Owen has managed to find himself a bed on the autopsy table, so it's possible that he wasn't as worse for wear as Ianto was. It's just a pity he didn't move the former occupant first.

Jack is nowhere to be seen. Ianto suspects that he is the only one of them to have made it back to a proper bed. He surveys the carnage as the first strains of incoherent Welsh mumbling reach his ears, and sighs.

"Five mugs of coffee with optional retcon coming right up..."

Two minutes later, standing in a small pile of ceramic shards and gazing mournfully at a cupboard which, however hard he looks, is completely devoid of the coffee he restocked it with yesterday,and clutching a bent teaspoon in his hand, he decides that the pills will go down better with another shot of Jack's special Khybernian vodka instead.


	7. Gwen

**And the final member of the team. At last. This one took quite a while, is a bit weird, and ranks lower in my opinion. That was probably a stupid thing to say at the start, but you've all been loyal so far. And as a sort of excuse I have been very busy thinking about packing. Yes, thinking about packing, not actually packing.**

**Another round of thanks, this time to: L.A.H.H., Madame Cyanure, Eleanor Harkness-Jones, GallifreyenCultOfSkaro, insert-witty-comment-here, chironsgirl, Chalcedony Rivers, xladymercuryx and brionyjae. **

Gwen

Owen looked at the results. He looked down at the substance. He looked back at the results.

"How…?"

It was a quiet day, as days at the Hub went, and Owen was working through his backlog of 'unidentified alien substances'. He hadn't expected it to be this easy.

He rechecked the results then prodded the powder in the Petri dish experimentally with a scalpel. Nothing happened.

Definitely…

"Ianto?" Owen's yell re-echoed around the Hub. He shouted his next words too, even though Ianto had appeared in front of him almost immediately, like a genie summoned from a bottle. "Why the hell is there coffee in my fridge?"

Ianto blinked. "Sorry? Why would I put coffee in your fridge?"

"That's what I asked."

"Are you sure it's the brand we use? Not something off-planet?"

"It looks like your stuff."

Ianto peered at the powder. "'My stuff' isn't tinged blue."

"It was next to something icky."

"There was some that went missing a few months back."

"When?"

"After Jack's booze-up."

"I still can't think why any of us would put it in my damn fridge. What kind of shit practical joke is that?"

"Could have been you. We were all pretty drunk. And you did kiss Tosh."

"Yeah, but we've only got Jack's word on that, haven't we? Claiming he can remember… Should see if he knows anything about _this_, just to test him."

"But he could just make something up. I could make something up. _You _could have done it as a joke, hiding my coffee."

"Yeah right. I'm not that childish. Not even when drunk. But _you _could have done it."

"Why would I have?"

"Good point, Ianto." Jack cut in. "Why would he hide his own coffee? You saw him in the morning."

"I saw three of him in the morning – 'cos your damn cocktails hadn't worn off!"

"Are we still arguing about this?" Tosh asked as she came up behind them. "I thought you'd stopped weeks back."

"New evidence." Owen raised up the Petri dish. "A sample of coffee found in _my _fridge."

"And what does that have to do with-?"

"Hi!" Gwen shouted cheerfully over the door alarms.

"You're late!" Owen shouted, attention instantly distracted to a new argument.

"Jack said I could come in late." Gwen replied breezily. "I asked a week ago."

"You never let me come in late." Owen whined, ever the petulant child.

"Owen, you don't have a relationship you're supposed to be keeping normal."

"Normal?" Ianto found himself querying.

"Well, vaguely normal." Gwen corrected. "Jack, can I still go home early tonight as well?"

"Why not just take the whole day off?" Owen suggested sarcastically.

Jack pondered briefly. "Don't see why not, unless something happens. We're not busy. You can all leave an hour early if you like."

He got a beam in reply from Gwen and a sort of half-scowl from Owen.

"This is of course on the condition that you do some work now."

No one moved. Jack felt that his authority was somewhat diminished.

"Nice earrings, Gwen. Are they new?"

Owen rolled his eyes in a very good impression of Ianto. The girls seemed to go through a daily ritual of complimenting each others outfits, but neither of them ever spared any comments for him.

"Yeah, Rhys got me them." Gwen gave one a flick. "I don't normally go for dangly, but since it's him…"

Jack coughed loudly. "I _said_ 'This is of course on the condition that…'"

"Ok!"

Ianto watched Gwen bounce off and suppressed a sudden and bizarre urge to sing the Tigger song. "Is it their anniversary, or something?"

"They haven't had the wedding yet." Owen pointed out, for once showing a surprisingly developed knowledge about his co-workers' out-of-the-office activities. "Otherwise she would have shut up about the dress by now."

"An anniversary of their relationship." Tosh explained in more detail. "It could be."

"Or it's Valentine's Day and we've all missed it." Owen suggested.

"Birthday?"

Owen snorted at Tosh's timid proposal. "It can't be someone's birthday. Gwen would have sent me a reminder if it was."

They thought this one through.

"Hey!" Owen protested as Ianto seized the mouse at his workstation and commandeered the doctor's computer.

"It _is _her birthday." Ianto stated, bringing up the relevant files. "And this time we have genuinely forgotten."

"Ah." Was all Jack said.

Tosh bit her lip. "What are we going to do?"

Ianto silenced Owen before he even had chance to begin. "We've got to give her _something_. She was the one trying to sort out all our birthdays out."

"Surprise party?" Tosh offered. "That way we can pretend that our not mentioning it now was deliberate."

Jack shook his head in sorrow. "Ah Toshiko, how we've corrupted you. But a good plan all the same. Someone get our birthday girl out of the Hub for an hour or two and I'll see what I can rustle up." He closed his eyes in sudden bliss. "And if I'm not mistaken that's the Rift Alarm now giving us the perfect excuse to get rid of her. Must have decided to be helpful for once. Ianto, take Gwen with you to sort it out and don't come back until I call you."

Ianto doesn't point out that the only thing the Rift Alarm can conceivably be mistaken for is an air raid siren, or that no one else knows where to find the party supplies at the supermarket. Instead he just heads for the door.

* * *

><p>"Balloons! Alcohol! Cake!" Tosh scribbled frantically as Jack dictated energetically. "Icecream too. A big banner, those little buns, some kind of present…"<p>

"What kind of present, specifically?"

"Um…"

* * *

><p>Ianto woke up and attempted to run through the list of 'when, where, who, why?' in his head, but got stuck on the 'when'. He tries "Hello?" instead, out loud.<p>

"Ianto? Are you ok?" Gwen's voice came from somewhere nearby.

He tried to formulate this one. "I'm in a cold dark place. My comms are gone, my gun is gone, and probably my phone too. I think my hands are tied to the wall. And I have a headache." He thought back to the question, head clearing. "So on the whole, probably not. How about you?"

"Same."

"Any idea…?"

"I think they gassed us."

"They?"

"Well, whoever did it. The last thing I remember is being in that warehouse."

"Yeah." Ianto thought back. From what he could tell he wasn't actually injured in any way, and being drugged would explain the headache.

"I don't suppose…?"

"What?"

"That escapism trick you pulled a while back…"

Ianto tried. "Not working. These people know what they're doing."

Gwen leant back against the wall. "So this is… what?"

"Err…" Ianto listed the possibilities. "Any of the usual: An attempt to get us out of the way, getting at Torchwood, getting at Jack, trying to obtain information, using us as a bargaining chip… nothing good. But at least we're out of the rain."

There was silence while Gwen took this in and then: "Why is it always us?"

"Sorry?"

"You know what I mean. Nine times out of ten when something like this happens it's one of us that's involved."

"Normally you, I think." Ianto could call to mind at least six instances, and those were just the more dramatic ones.

"What about those tall things with the pincers last week?" Gwen retorted. "When _I_ rescued _you_?"

"Yeah, but they got Owen too."

"Still counts."

"Ok, but mostly you. Mostly us."

"Exactly."

"Maybe we look like targets?"

"Tosh looks like a bit like a target too, and she doesn't get weapons held to her head half as much as we do."

"Something alien then, or genetic, or…"

"You don't know."

"Nope."

"I _hate _being a damsel in distress."

"Seconded."

"You're not a damsel."

"Person in peril. Archivist in agony. Severely threatened secretary."

"That'll do."

* * *

><p>"Chocolates and flowers. Girls always like those."<p>

Tosh wrinkled her nose at Owen's generalisations. "Always?"

"Yep. And jewellery."

"You did seem to like the chocolates we bought you for your birthday." Jack mused. "And she's already got earrings. We don't want to look like we're competing with Rhys."

"Oh, what the hell. If it pisses off Mr Big Welshman then we can buy her a twenty-four caret gold ring, so long as Torchwood funds it."

"Actually, I think we'll just go with flowers and chocolates for now, but I appreciate the effort, Owen."

* * *

><p>"Happy Birthday by the way." Ianto couldn't think of anything else to say. "I know I was supposed to save it for later, but…"<p>

"Thank you. It was quite a happy one, until we got into this mess."

"I can't think of many people I'd rather be locked in a cell with, if I had the choice."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Owen just moans, and Jack makes improper suggestions the whole time."

"See, you _are_ a pro at this. What about Tosh? I don't think I've ever been locked up with her."

"Tosh and me sing." Ianto peered into the darkness towards where her voice kept coming from. "Fancy a few round of 'Happy Birthday' to pass the time until our humiliating rescue?"

* * *

><p>"It's my turn to drive."<p>

Owen looked at Tosh in scorn. "It's never your turn to drive. We wouldn't get anywhere."

"It's _my _turn."

"Jack, you drove yesterday." Birthdays, Owen noted, appeared to make Jack act more childishly than usual. And they were taking him shopping.

"Who's boss?"

* * *

><p>"I spy with my little eye…"<p>

"We're sat in the dark."

"I _can't _spy with my little eye, something beginning with R."

"Rescue?"

"That was short. Noughts and crosses?"

* * *

><p>"I've found a banner!" Owen yelled happily, startling a middle-aged woman with three kids. He hasn't stopped getting the 'why are you acting so immaturely?' looks since they entered the store, but at least <em>he<em> isn't the one looking for humorously- shaped vegetables.

"What age has it got on it?" Tosh asked, suspecting that something was wrong here.

"Actually, there's two. I can't decide between five and fifty. Hey, can we have the right number of candles on the cake? Bet it will melt before we get all forty going."

"She's not forty, Owen, and you know it."

"Forty-one then. Aha! Balloons!"

Jack appeared, looking disgruntled. "I've never seen a more boring set of vegetables."

"There's a conspiracy. Sainsbury's screen them."

* * *

><p>"So, Mr Severely Threatened Secretary, who's on the rota for being interrogated this week?"<p>

"Owen, I think, but he's not here."

"Of us two then."

"You."

"Me? But I was in that invasion we had in Penarth three weeks back."

"Yes, and what about that incursion we had last week in the Hub?"

"It was threatening the coffee machine, Ianto, not you! A short-sighted alien pointing a gun at a favourite kitchen appliance is not the same as one holding a knife to your throat."

"Psychological trauma."

"You know, sometimes I think Owen's right about you. What's that noise?"

"That's the aliens coming to get us. Jack would be louder. More gunshots, etcetera. Hopefully they'll explain what's happening."

"Right, I'm doing the talking then. I've got more experience at this."

"You _finally _admit it…"

* * *

><p>Owen sniffed gingerly at a flower. It was the tenth one he'd tried, and he still couldn't see why Tosh thought they smelt nice. All they did was make him want to sneeze. And he couldn't understand why she thought they looked pretty either. Just a lot of bright colours.<p>

Women were _weird. _

What he really _really _couldn't understand was how Tosh and Jack could manage to have such a looooong argument over the merits of roses versus lilies.

"Lilies symbolise death. You can't give her those."

"Yes, but red roses are all about romance, Jack. _You _were the one who didn't want to buy her jewellery."

"I never said they had to be red."

"Well, white's for purity, I think…"

Owen felt that he could comment for the first time in this conversation. "Gwen's not pure."

"Try and be nice, Owen."

"Go on, admit it. You know it's true."

"What about yellow?"

Tosh pulled a face. "Yellow looks horrible. And I've never been fond of pink. Let's get her something else instead."

"Thistles."

* * *

><p>"I'm sorry? You want us to tell you <em>what<em>?"

"Which one of you does Jack Harkness care the most about?"

"Right." Gwen glanced across at Ianto, whom she could at least now see. He raised his eyebrows in reply.

Hey, at least this alien was vaguely humanoid. Not like the tentacled monstrosity that they'd dredged up from the bay on Tuesday.

"And you want to know this why?"

Ianto listened to the response carefully. "I'm guessing from your deep desire to murder Jack's favourite in as slow and painful a manner as possible that you're yet another person he's inconvenienced?"

"If I ever got that annoyed at Jack, I'd just kill _him._"Gwen theorised. "No need to bring other people into it."

"This is not a punishment. It is a warning."

"Then wouldn't it make more sense to leave the favourite as a guarantee of future good behaviour?"

"Ianto."

"Yes."

"You aren't helping. Shut up."

"Sorry."

Their captor made a noise that sounded like it was scouring its throat out with a wire brush, apparently in an effort to regain control of the conversation. "Which of you-?"

"He's never actually told us. I don't think he has a favourite."

Ianto nodded. "Jack doesn't think like that. Anyway, it's like parents and their kids. Even if he had a favourite he wouldn't be allowed to tell us."

The creature put on a face Gwen would describe as 'puzzled'. The nose was upside down. "So which of you should I kill?"

"How about neither of us?"

"No."

"Well, there was always a chance."

* * *

><p>Tosh tried to conceal her awe as Jack steered them alongside the counter of Cardiff's most prestigious chocolatier's, addressing them as he went. "Which ones do you think she'd like?"<p>

"Ah…" Tosh has been a closet semi-chocoholic since she was a child, and this was slightly overwhelming. She'd avoided this shop for years, knowing that once visited the temptation would be too great.

"See what Tosh likes and then work from there." Owen was ogling some brandy snaps.

"Um… Everything?"

Jack sighed, tempted by the idea. "Much though I love Gwen…"

"I couldn't allow you to buy her that much chocolate." Owen announced. "It would be unhealthy."

Looking round, Jack's eyes alighted on something promising. "How about a chocolate duck?"

* * *

><p>Ianto decided to do the noble thing. He was fairly sure that at the rate this conversation was going Jack and the others would turn up long before anybody actually got hurt, except maybe their alien friend from thinking too hard. Anyway, it had become rather a habit. Tosh called it 'being a gentleman'. Owen called it 'being a chivalry-obsessed idiot with a secret death wish', but he did it himself all the same.<p>

"It's Gwen's birthday, if that helps you decide." Not the best self-sacrificing speech he'd ever made, but it'd have to do.

"No…"

The alien brightened up. "She's a newborn? Parents care more for newborns."

Ianto silently cursed the vagaries of the English language. "No, it's the anniversary of her birth. And we're not actually Jack's children. That was just an analogy. Like real life but not. Semi-true." He's still surprised that the alien wasn't reading out of some sort of Gobblydegook-to-English phrasebook: 'Section four: Death threats for beginners.'

They watched their interrogator try to bend its brain round this concept. "She's his half-child?"

"Half…? What? No."

"She's his child but you are not."

"Yes. No, no. Definitely no. Where are we, sorry?"

"Ah! She is your newborn _and_ his! Human has two parents, yes? And she is your an-ni-ver-sa-ri."

"Um…"

Gwen is fed up of trying to follow. "If you're going to kill me can you just get on with it?"

* * *

><p>"We still haven't heard from Gwen and Ianto." Tosh reminded them, with mixed traces of anxiety for the silence and excitement about the suprise party. She reached for another chocolate as she looked around the room. "Jack, have you called them yet?"<p>

Owen paused in trying to put up a banner, his mind still engaged with the task of working out what exactly had possessed him to buy Tosh chocolates. Probably the way she was looking at them with puppy dog eyes, he decided. He definitely wasn't doing it again, not when it made her this hyperactive. "We're not quite ready."

"We will be by the time they get here."

"No, I haven't called them. Yet." Jack picked up the comms. "Ianto? Time to come home."

"No updates or anything." Tosh was checking the computers, double speed.

"He's not replying."

Owen stuck in the last drawing pin triumphantly. "Bet you a tenner they've gone and got themselves kidnapped."

* * *

><p>Ianto was astounded. Astounded and very perplexed. How could an alien possess such immensely detailed information about what was happening in the Hub and yet not understand the very basics of human biology? Obviously the medical bay had not been one of the places being spied upon.<p>

Next to him Gwen was experiencing very similar emotions. "So, you're going to hack me to death. With a teaspoon. A blunt teaspoon."

The teaspoon in question gleamed. If Ianto had been in a literary frame of mind he would have said that it did so menacingly.

"I mean, obviously I'm scared and everything, but do I get lunch breaks?"

* * *

><p>"Right, this time I am <em>definitely <em>driving."

* * *

><p>Ianto sat patiently. They couldn't be far off now. No one could take <em>that <em>long to walk round a supermarket.

It was a good thing that Gwen's torturer thought that suppressed giggling was the normal human pain response.

A distant crashing, albeit minus gunshots, heralded the arrival of the rest of Torchwood Three, followed by the traditional breaking down of the door in a way that would have pleased many pyrotechnics experts but was, in fact, unnecessary. All as usual. As far as Ianto was aware, however, the Torchwood break-in squad did not normally carry daffodils as a weapon of choice.

* * *

><p>"So you knew that that would happen?"<p>

"Of course. The Nyfolgomai are extremely allergic to flowers."

"Right. Daffodils in particular?"

"No. Those are just what we happened to buy for Gwen."

"For me? Thank you."

"Yeah, we didn't know what type to get and then we remembered you were Welsh. And they were on special offer."

"How… considerate of you, Owen."

"So was he another one of your exes?" Ianto questioned Jack.

"Father of an ex."

"What happened?"

"I bought her flowers."

"Ah."

"Yeah. I didn't know then. Nasty business. Had to leave in a bit of a hurry. That was him warning me not to go near her again. It's a cultural thing they have. And I'm sorry we didn't save you earlier."

"We were managing fine on our own."

"Gwen, you would have died of boredom if you'd stayed there much longer. And you're injured."

"Owen, there's a small red mark on the back of my little finger. It's hardly as though he managed to detach it."

"Exactly."

"Well, as long as I get time off for it."

Ianto chips in: "I have backache and psychological trauma."

"Ah, you'll both be fine." Jack swerved round a corner.

"You're heartless, you know that?" Gwen told him. "Today's my birthday and I've been kidnapped, imprisoned, tied up, tortured, nearly murdered…"

"Alright, alright. If I give you a chocolate duck will that make up for it?"

Gwen considered. "Ok."

"Too late."

"Sorry?"

Owen smirked. "Tosh has already eaten it. And you both owe me a tenner."

**I have eaten my chocolate duck and the teaspoon wanted to appear in the cast list again. That is all you need to know. **

**Err… Sorry? I did say. **


End file.
